‘I can’t do this,’ Marilyn Angus said. ‘Waiting for the worst news, waiting and there is no news. I cannot do it, but I do it. What is wrong with you?’
Her voice was a whisper. She sat beside Alan’s bed, among the blipping machines, and hated him. What had happened to David had torn them apart when everyone assumed it would have brought them much closer together; she would have assumed so beforehand. But it had revealed to her a husband she did not know or want to know – one who in her eyes was a coward. Running away to work before seven every morning and staying there until late at night, taking on other people’s caseloads, putting himself on permanent call – she saw it all not merely as unsupportive of her but as cowardice. This was cowardice too. His wrists were bandaged, there was a drip into his arm, every monitor was switched on to every function of his body and she despised him. It was the most terrifying feeling of her life. She did not know this man, her husband, Lucy’s father. David’s father.
His head was turned away from her. He had not spoken to her since she had arrived with the police officer. Kate cares more than you, she thought, staring at his bandaged wrist.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Marilyn said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in your mind any more. I don’t understand why you did this.’
‘No,’ he said, so softly that she could hardly hear him.
‘If David had been brought home tonight, if –’
‘David is dead.’
The words came out of his mouth and rested on the air, heavy and full of black bile. They frightened her. If she had reached out, she could have touched the words and they would have entered her body, her bloodstream and her belief. She opened her mouth but no words came out of that, neither poisonous nor hallowed.
‘I was operating. I looked at the monitor and saw my probe hovering inside a patient’s brain and I simply knew. Don’t ask me why then. I don’t know why then. I looked and saw that David was dead and then there was no way of living myself.’
‘Is that all?’
He moved his head. She saw his face, drained of colour, grey as the face of something dead, his eyes flat and sunken into his head, lifeless.
‘Is there nothing else in your life?’
‘What?’
‘Not Lucy? Not me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Not worth going on living for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I said, if David were to be brought home, alive and well … wouldn’t he need you?’
‘Of course.’
‘You didn’t think of that?’
‘David is dead.’
Marilyn put her head down on the hospital bed and screamed into the covers, stuffing the sheet into her mouth so that nothing could be heard. She felt a desperate need to hurt someone and the only way she knew to stop herself was by hurting herself, trying to choke on the cotton bedding.
The bell rang. A nurse and Kate Marshall were in the room and behind her, talking to her gently, their hands on her shoulders, lifting her back.
‘Marilyn, it’s all right,’ Kate had her arms round her now. ‘Don’t worry –’
Marilyn swung round and stabbed her elbow hard into the policewoman’s face. Kate gave a cry of pain. The room seemed to explode with people and voices.
They led her out to a waiting room with blue chairs. Someone brought her a glass of water. Someone else came with a cup of tea. Marilyn sat with her arms clutched tightly round her own body, rocking, rocking, trying to keep every sound out, every word, every clumsy attempt at reassurance or comfort. Alan’s words had gone home. There had been a place she had kept secure, a place in which there had been a small bright patch of warmth and hope into which she had been able to retreat. No one else knew that it was there but she had relied on it because in there was the truth, that David was alive and well and would come home. Alan had sent a blade slicing through the wall and all the light and brightness and hope had leaked out and turned black, a pool of darkening blood on a floor. The place was empty now, the air foul and contaminating. He had killed the last resource she had. Now there was no hope or comfort. David was dead. Everyone else had known it but she had not. Now, she did.
She unclenched her cramped body slowly. The muscles around her ribcage and in her back ached, and there was a dull pain beneath her heart.
A nurse was beside her, holding a glass of water patiently. Marilyn tried to take it but her hand shook so violently she could not, so the girl held it to her lips and tipped it, letting her drink as a child first learning from the cup. She tried to thank her but her throat was constricted. The nurse stroked her arm.
‘Kate …’ the word came out eventually, an odd croak.
‘She’ll be here in just a minute. Don’t worry.’
The girl now lifted a cup of warm sweet tea and held that to Marilyn’s lips. People walked by in the corridor. A door closed with a strange sucking noise. There was a chink of metal on metal. This room was very warm, very calm. There was a picture of a wave curling over on to a beach, another of a garden in the snow. ‘Donated by the Friends of Bevham General Hospital. 1996.’
Marilyn tried to find a handkerchief in her coat pocket. Her face was scored with tears. The nurse handed her some tissues. She shrank from the thought of the violence that had welled up inside her, of how she had turned so angrily on the policewoman; she had never struck out at anyone in her life, never hurt a spider or trod on a snail. Neither of her children had ever been given the lightest smack. Yet she had felt rage enough to want to kill.
The door of the room with the blue chairs and the quiet pictures opened. A young doctor in a white coat came in.
‘How are you feeling, Mrs Angus?’
Why were they being so kind to her, speaking so reassuringly, looking so sympathetic? They should be locking her away, straitjacketing her, leaving her alone with her own anger – not this.
He took her pulse, then held on to her hand. ‘That’s fine. When you feel ready the police have sent a car – someone will drive you home and stay with you. I’ve prescribed a sedative, you can collect it at the nursing station as you go out … you need to sleep. Is there anything else I can do?’
She looked into his face. He had a tiny mole beside his eye, and a scar on his upper lip. He might have been fifteen years old. How could he be speaking to her with such calm confidence? How was it that she was ready to do whatever he asked?
She shook her head, then again managed to say Kate’s name.
‘She’s fine but she’s going off duty for tonight.’
‘What did I do?’
‘Gave her a bloody nose actually. No lasting damage.’ He smiled. ‘You packed a punch.’
She didn’t mind that he was trying to lighten her up, make her relax. She didn’t mind. She smiled back at him. Then she said, ‘My son David is dead,’ and knew that it was the simple truth.
The young doctor did not insult her by contradicting her or trying to jolly her out of what she had said, he merely took her hand and held it firmly in silence, and stayed with her until a different police officer came and took her down to the waiting car and home.